When I started school, admittedly around 30 years ago now, I thought we had all the best gadgets you could possibly need. My favourite was the electric pencil sharpener.
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I remember my kindergarten classroom fitted with a big blackboard, chalk dust, books, building blocks and board games.
Classroom lessons were mainly focused on using our text books and pencils.
We learnt the art of having a pen pal. Writing to people from across the country and even overseas was a great way to learn about how people on the other side of the world lived.
As the years passed I started to get more and more homework. My parents decided my sisters and I needed some great learning tools at home. So they purchased the top of the line set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. They were very well used books.
I completed my HSC and went off to Uni. Years later when I returned to the classroom, this time as a high school teacher, things had changed.
Schools had ‘‘computer labs’’ where every student in the class could sit down to their own computer. Blackboards had been replaced with whiteboards, and chalk was replaced with whiteboard markers.
I was pleased to see one thing remain the same though - classrooms and schools were still filled to the brim with books.
The internet was widely used and information was easily and quickly accessed.
Letters were replaced with emails. The students had no idea what an Encyclopaedia Britannica was. How the times had changed.
Now again I return to the classrooms, this time in my role as a Member of Parliament. And once again I was blown away by how much had changed. Schools in my electorate have advanced further than I could ever have imagined.
The whiteboard of my teaching days has been replaced with a smart board - the things those boards can do is beyond belief.
The use of pen and paper is becoming less and less important in many schools with students instead using laptops and iPads in the classrooms as their primary tool.
Some local schools even have a 1:1 ratio of students to iPads.
Students have even replaced Emails with Skype. Schools across the Illawarra are able to let the students experience what an international classroom is like by skyping with classes from across the globe. Instant information is now the norm.
In a few years, my son will be starting school. After seeing this evolution of classrooms in the short years I’ve been exposed to them, I can’t even begin to imagine what his classroom will be like.
As a Member of Parliament for a community where education will drive our future prosperity, I intend to be very outspoken on the need to ensure that funding keeps up with the pace of change, otherwise if it doesn’t, we are letting future generations down and that is something that none of us want to be responsible for.
Ryan Park is the State Member for Keira and Shadow Minister for Roads.
